Times of the Islands Winter 2015-16

to Susan the cell phone and the computer. Susan recalls
that the very next day she was fostering a litter of eight
puppies on her back deck. She’d never owned a dog in her
life and her cat was not amused by the intruders. Today
she and her husband, Bob-the-Dog-Whisperer Blehr, have
a pack. Each was once considered unadoptable.
Susan, with Bob at her back, ran the TCSPCA from
home until 2003. An experienced manager and networker,
she and volunteers set up foster homes for
puppies and kittens. Louise Henderson was hired as the
TCSPCA educational officer to go into all the schools to
talk about caring, responsible pet ownership and the
importance of vaccinations and spay/neuter. The TCSPCA
worked with government to draft legislation to protect
animals and people. They continued to encourage people
to have their pets sterilized and worked tirelessly picking
up animals, delivering them for free surgery, and then
returning them home. The number of dog attacks and
calls about nuisance dogs abated dramatically.
In 2003 the TCSPCA secured a small office upstairs in
Suzie Turn Plaza, which made Susan’s home life slightly
less chaotic. Then in 2004, after the government decided
to take the Feral Dog Programme in-house, the TCSPCA
went into fundraising mode and the Just for Fun Dog
Show (the first of which was held in 2002 in the Graceway
IGA parking lot,) became a vital source of revenue to continue
to pay for the free spay/neuter programme.
When the feral dog population exploded again in
2004, government reached out to contract the TCSPCA
again, to bring Mark Johnson’s team back to trap and
euthanize or spay/neuter dogs, as temporary, stop-gap
measures to control animals in areas frequented by tourists.
Without consistent funding, the TCSPCA was finding
it difficult to subsidize their spay/neuter/vaccination program
for the river of Islanders who wanted to do the right
thing for their pets. Although the TCSPCA received donations
from supporters and funds from resident Heather
Forbes’ Potcake Foundation, they realized that they simply
could not continue paying for veterinary services.
However, another perfect storm was brewing. In
2007 an outbreak of the deadly canine distemper virus
swept the island. The TCSPCA reacted swiftly, obtaining
thousands of donated vials of the vaccination against the
terrible disease. Anyone who had ever administered a
subcutaneous injection was enlisted to go door to door
in the communities to administer the vaccination to pets
in yards and homes. One of the volunteers was a retired
veterinarian, Dr. Rich Sefcik.
Several pets did succumb to distemper, but many
more did not. And Dr. Sefcik, who had bought a house
on Provo in 2004 and retired to the island with his wife
Jan, offered to perform spays and neuters, part-time, for
the TCSPCA as a volunteer vet. However, they would need
a clinic to perform the surgeries and care for the animals
before and after the procedure.
Enter Annie Notley. She and her husband Simon
were visiting Provo and heard of the TCSPCA. After meetings
and consults with Susan, she donated $35,000 to
the organization to secure a small spay/neuter clinic.
Fortunately, there was a vacant room for rent at Suzie
Turn Plaza so Dr. Rich designed and equipped the clinic,
and in August 2008 he performed the first surgery in the
new clinic.
This photo of Annie Notley and Dr. Rich Sefcik was taken on the day
of the first surgery in the new TCSPCA clinic in August 2008.
Five mornings a week, for almost five years, Dr. Rich
advised and reassured pet owners. He spayed or neutered
almost 3,000 dogs and cats. His quiet confidence
and wicked sense of humour made it easy for a diverse
group of volunteers to happily work with him. Owners
and their pets responded positively to him. In short, he
was a Godsend.
With Dr. Rich in situ, the TCSPCA was able to realize
one of their most important goals — to take veterinary
care to all of the Turks & Caicos Islands. In 2010 the
TCSPCA team packed their eight-year-old animal bus with
everything they needed to perform surgeries and wellness
checks, and shipped the van to Sandy Point, North
Caicos. They then drove to Blue Horizon Resort on Middle
Caicos, where they set up the surgery in a warehouse
space there.
Since then, the TCSPCA has held clinics on all the out
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